I got up and made her breakfast, made some coffee, and the three of us went outside. The wind was still, but iWindSurf was showing it was going to start gusting by 5am out of the north. By 10am it was going to lie down, as it switched from the north to the NE, and would be less than 5mph by 11am.
When I took the dogs for their walk, we passed by the lake, and I could see that it was white-capping. It was a good call to wait.
I told Dave and Danielle to be at my house at 9:30, so we could launch by 10am. They are my neighbors across the road from my house, and they are super nice people. We share different food recipes with each other, and Dave is a wizard with the smoker out back. Yum!
They both had birthdays within the last two weeks, so I decided to take them out for a few hours of fishing today.
We launched at 10, right on schedule. When Danielle and I were at the ramp with the boat waiting for Dave to walk back, after parking the truck and trailer, another boat with three fellas in it yelled to me, “Are you Juls?” “Yeah…that’s me”, I said, smiling. “I read your reports all the time”, one of them said. “Thanks for reading them”, I said. He added, “In fact, you said in your report yesterday that because of the wind forecast that you would be launching right now, and that’s why we’re here right now”, he said, laughing. “Was I right?” They all agreed and nodded. We wished each other good luck today, and off they went.
It was still a little bumpy as the north wind was subsiding, but it wasn’t bad at all. I pointed the Vexus north along the west side of the Bass Islands, and watched the Garmin for any fish marks as we drove. I noticed the chart speed was a little slow and was still set to a trolling speed, so I bumped it up to 10, so it would mark fish better while the boat was on plane.
Once we found the kind of numbers on the screen that made it worth a stop, we set up. I’m not going to say exactly where, because the fish move, so just use your electronics to tell you when to stop. I will say I wasn’t more than a couple of miles west of the actual islands. I drove until I ran out of fish marks and then turned the boat back around to go south.
Side note: I’m having another issue with the Ulterra that is caused by the new software update that I had to do this past week. Any time I turn the motor’s power off and turn it back on again, I have to re-pair the remote to the motor. I shouldn’t have to do that. It’s supposed to stay paired all the time. I’ll have to contact Minn-Kota again to see if that’s a known issue and if there is another software update for that.
Once the FishHawk was down to 18′, the Ulterra and baby Merc were set to a speed of 2.0mph.
The water temp on the surface was 54.7 degrees and 56.2 degrees at 18 feet down.
The dipsey rods were set out first. The usual zero and three settings. We were only over 34 feet of water and marking fish anywhere from 15 to 30 feet down, so the zero setting was set at 27 to start, and the three setting was set at 47 back.
Both were running a Yeck spoon with a blue belly that I got at Hi-Way Bait. DJ Custom Eye Lures added the blue bellies for me. I don’t know the name of the actual color of the spoon, but if you ask them, they should know the spoon I’m talking about. It’s been a productive spoon for me over the past couple of years that I have been using it.
The zero setting was eventually set to 33 back and caught a couple of fish. The three setting caught two and lost one fish, too.
Bandits ran behind the Off Shore boards…4 on the port side, and 3 on the starboard side.
Long story short…bait colors were changed out until we found the ones that were repeatedly producing. The best one was “Buck Fever” (Domka Outdoors custom color), It’s a purple back with chrome sides and belly. 63 back unassisted was the magic number, apparently, because it caught the majority of our fish. We ended up putting two more out.
Another that caught a few fish was “Green Lantern” (Slim Shady custom color) at 67 back.
It was one of those days where the starboard side was outproducing the port side for some reason, even though we had the same setups on both sides. It didn’t matter if we were going north to south or south to north…the one side just caught more fish.
By 11am, the lake was calm, so we were able to just circle around the school of fish in that area. There wasn’t anyone close to us, so it was a pleasant day. There were boats out further to the west of us, but never close enough to bother us with “Right of Way” issues.
We managed to catch our limits in about 3 hours. It wasn’t on fire, but it was steady enough to keep it fun. The fish were perfect eaters, too….mostly 18-22″ fish. We had two throwbacks and two that came unbuttoned before we saw them.
Dave and Danielle had a great time, enjoyed the beautiful weather, and caught more fish than they expected to. Danielle said, “I just like being on the lake”, and Dave said, “I would have been happy if we had only caught 4, so this is great”….and that makes me happy! 🙂
Happy Birthday, you two! I had a great time fishing with you, and I’m looking forward to your trip in June!
I’ll be back out Tuesday with a couple of my regulars, Dick and Brad. Wednesday is a trip with some new clients, and Friday is with Dick and Brad, again. The winds this week are up and down….hopefully, they stay down! This wind is making me crazy.
Stay tuned….
Capt Juls